


the dangers in the anger (and the hanging onto it)

by Katbelle



Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Afterlife - Freeform, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Character Death, Character Turned Into a Ghost, Don't mind the Major Character Death tag, Friendship, Gen, Ghosts, Ghosts learning how to ghost, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Foggy Nelson/Marci Stahl, Minor Frank Castle/Karen Page, Post-Season/Series 03, Said character dies at the beginning of the story and goes on from there, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-09-27 09:01:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20405110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katbelle/pseuds/Katbelle
Summary: There is a ghost haunting Matt Murdock's apartment. It's not the ghost you think of.If he had recognised the building correctly and executed his jump perfectly, there should be an open dumpster directly below him, with enough trash to cushion the fall. And if he had made a mistake, if he were wrong... It'd be too bad for poor Foggy who'd have to find himself another law partner.





	the dangers in the anger (and the hanging onto it)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RandomFlyer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RandomFlyer/gifts).

> The fic was inspired by: 1) "two friends walk into a room, three friends walk out", and 2) [this pic](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/299911656435835305/). Title taken from "Nothing More" by Alternate Routes.
> 
> P.S. Don't mind the Major Character Death tag - said major character dies literally at the beginning of his story.

**the dangers in the anger (and the hanging onto it)**

_Now I know what a ghost is. Unfinished business, that's what._  
Salman Rushdie

**part I: denial**

1\. 

His ears were still ringing from the force of the blow. The crime ring he'd been investigating for the past couple of weeks was behind it, he was sure – which meant that he was getting close. Close enough to figuring out who were the rich big players behind all those muscles in expensive-smelling suits who has been harassing lawyers representing tenants in several tenement cases across Hell's Kitchen. Close enough that those behind were getting nervous.

Nervous enough to send all their muscled employees – sans their day-job suits – to try and stop Daredevil with their fists and their knives and their baseball bats.

It didn't work, of course. Muscles has managed to land several blows – mostly to the head, he really ought to take Foggy's advice and get a new armour, or at least a helmet – but Daredevil was faster and better trained than they were. And, unbestknown to them, it wasn't just a general sense of injustice fuelling him this time.

This time these idiots had to make it personal by threatening Franklin Nelson and his partner.

They really should have known better. Fisk tried that, tried threatening Foggy, and look where that got him. Back in jail, having lost everything he had, again.

Foggy was off-limits and the sooner the lowlives of Hell's Kitchen learnt that, the easier Matt's life would be.

He hoped they'd never learn. There was the undeniable thrill of satisfaction he got every time a criminal's heart skipped a beat as he realised it was his conduct towards Foggy Nelson that got him in trouble.

Matt stopped at the edge of a rooftop to take a deep breath. He warehouse where he fought these goons reeked of rotten fish; he was sure he was going to have to decline Foggy's offers of going out for sushi for the next week or so. Ugh. He pressed a hand to his chest. His ribs must have got broken; it hurt to breathe.

Shit. They had a hearing the next day. If he showed up in pain and covered in bruises, Foggy would be livid. In the quiet, polite and concerned way he'd adopted once he'd finally accepted that there was no way of convincing Matt to hang up the suit. But livid nonetheless.

Hopefully Karen had restocked their secret stash of foundation and would be willing to help him get ready. Just had to look good and not wince too much.

A soft exhale behind him. Shit, shit. His senses must be fried if he hadn't heard the guy coming earlier. Guys. Guys, plural, there were three... four of them, now that he was focusing he could hear their heartbeats.

Four to one were not bad odds usually, but tonight he'd already been in a fight, he'd already got his ass kicked, it hurt to breathe and his head was pounding. And he had to be at work in about three hours.

Time for an exit strategy.

Matt hesitated for a second. He knew this neighbourhood. He knew this block, every inch of it, like the back of his hand. He was facing the east side of it. There was a four-story building. There was a dumpster bin right below, always open because the residents were quietly leaving food to be taken by those in need.

A swish. One of the men had a knife. No, longer. A machete. A machete? Who in their right might was carrying a machete around New York?

Time to go.

Before the four muscles in tracksuits could react, Matt hoisted himself up onto the parapet.

2.

If he had recognised the building correctly and executed his jump perfectly, there should be an open dumpster directly below him, with enough trash to cushion the fall.

3.

And if he had made a mistake, if he were wrong... It'd be too bad for poor Foggy who'd have to find himself another law partner.

4.

Matt jumped.

5.

And Matt landed.

6.

It took him a moment to get used to the chill of the room. And the faint smell of antiseptic.

Oh. Oh no.

He groaned. Great. He got himself landed in a hospital. Foggy would be thrilled. No doubt already was, freaking out internally somewhere on the side of Matt's bed, readying himself to deliver another of his by now patented holier-than-thou speeches about stupid risks Matt took and the danger he was putting them all and their practice in.

Matt was in no mood for that, but was resigned to it being his fate.

"Mr Nelson?"

A woman's voice. Nice. Kind-sounding. The type of a person who would work as a nurse at a hospital. Soothing the distraught family members.

"Yes."

Interesting. Foggy sounded very choked up. More than usual, anyway.

"You two going to be alright?"

That was Brett.

Brett?

"Yeah. Thanks, Brett." Karen's voice was perfectly flat, on the other hand.

"I'll be outside in case you need me."

The sound of rustled cloth, as if someone just slapped a hand on another's shoulder and squeezed. Door creaking open and close.

"You can see him if you'd like." The nurse, still kind. Kinder, even.

A sound came from Foggy, something that was supposed to be words but didn't quite manage.

"We would," Karen supplied.

They fell silent. He must be in a really bad state to warrant this kind of behaviour. Probably managed to land himself in the ICU, he'll never hear the end of it now.

Rustle of sheets.

Karen sucked in a breath. "Oh God."

"He sustained many injuries," the nurse explained quietly. "Multiple broken ribs, a fractured clavicle... Blunt force trauma to the head and the back."

"Is that what--" Foggy stopped. "Is that what did it?"

A silent beat and then, "He fell. Or was pushed off a rooftop."

"Jesus."

"There is something else," the nurse said slowly, as if judging Foggy and Karen's reactions, "that you should know. The EMT called to the scene found him in a very... particular getup."

"Oh?" Karen, still flatly

"He removed anything potentially incriminating before the police showed up to bag the body. Just so you know," the nurse's voice dropped to a conspirational whisper, "he won't tell anyone. Nor will I. Deke and I are both from the Kitchen and we appreciate everything he does for us. Did. You don't have to worry, the secret is safe."

"That's a comfort," Foggy said and the sarcasm didn't quite land due to the raw grief in his voice. "At least we won't have to worry about him getting posthumously disbarred."

Wait, what?

Matt opened his eyes. He opened his eyes and saw a tall blonde standing next to a man in a wrinkled suit who had his head bowed over a body.

"I'll leave you now," said a woman who was definitely not a nurse.

Not a nurse. A mortician. Not a hospital. A morgue.

The blonde brought hands to her face and covered her mouth. The man next to her brushed his fingertips across the cheek of the dead body.

"Oh, Matty," the man said in Foggy's voice, "what have you done to yourself."

7.

_No._

Oh _no_.

No. Way.

He couldn't be dead.

He just _couldn't_.

8\. 

He screamed himself hoarse. He screamed when the dead-eyed man speaking in Foggy's voice touched the dead man's – his, oh God, _his_ – cheek and then eyes and then the skin over a still heart. He screamed when the blonde kissed his knuckles and used Karen's voice to say goodbye.

He was still screaming then the mortician came back and pulled the sheet back over his face.

He screamed.

He kept screaming.

No one heard.

9.

And then they left. The blonde and the dead-eyed man, _Karen and Foggy_, they left.

Left him alone, in a morgue, where on one of the slabs laid a broken body of a broken man that apparently used to be him.

He tried kicking a metal chair.

His foot went straight through it.

10.

As a Catholic, Matt believed in Heaven and Hell. Heaven was the goal and the dream of course, but also something he recognised he would most likely never deserve. Hell was a place to avoid at all cost, eternal damnation and such.

No one had ever said anything about ghosts.

Ghosts weren't real. They couldn't be. That was insane. That went against everything he'd ever believed. He couldn't have been that wrong. There was just... no way.

All of this had to be some sort of a terrible, sick joke.

Yes, exactly.

11.

He decided to leave. Managed even to walk all the way to the door before encountering a problem. He door was closed and locked.

His hand went straight through he doorknob. He had no way of opening it.

_Fuck._

12.

It was _bullshit_.

13.

Two days later – and a number of autopsies he frankly hadn't wanted to experience – he was properly _pissed_.

14.

Was this what Hell was like? Not a place of eternal damnation, no fire and brimstone, no agonising screams, but being forced to stay behind? Being forced to just... linger aimlessly?

It sounded like Hell.

"The funeral home people should be here tomorrow."

Matt's head snapped up. That was Foggy's voice.

"Are you sure you want to--" And that was Karen's. "Brett could bring those things for us. We don't have to do it ourselves."

"I know." Foggy's voice was coming from behind the closed doors of the morgue. Matt could still hear him perfectly. "It's that Matt is very particular about his stuff."

"Was."

"What?"

A beat. "Nothing, Foggy."

The voices grew more distant.

Matt yelled at them, screamed that he was there, why couldn't they see him, why couldn't they see him when he was _right there_, but they couldn't hear him either.

Matt closed his eyes and let the rage flow through him.

Fuck.

_Fuck_.

15.

Two friends come into the morgue. Three friends walk out.

**part II: anger**

1.

When he opened his eyes, he thought for a second that he ended up in Heaven after all.

Bright light filled his vision and seeing _period_ after years of being blind was jarring, but this? This was just _painful_.

"Isn't this a little early for a Jack Daniels?"

Marci's clipped tone filled his ears. Matt had never heard something so beautiful. Marci's voice meant Marci and Marci meant that he wasn't in that cold locked place anymore. He couldn't imagine Marci ever setting foot in a morgue.

He chanced opening one eye. The brightness was still there, but after a moment he adjusted enough to recognise it for what it was – sunlight.

Oh _God_, he forgot what sunlight was like.

"Foggy-bear."

Another blond woman, but this one shorter, with more pronounced curves to her body. Marci. _This_ was Marci? Marci looked nothing like what Matt imagined her to be. Marci was stunning.

"It's four o'clock somewhere in the world," Foggy grumbled from a leather couch.

This had to be... This had to be Foggy and Marci's place.

Marci sighed. "But it's 8 am in New York. Foggy, I'm _worried_."

Foggy looked... terrible was the kindest word. Eyes bloodshot, clothes rumpled, hair greasy and in disarray. Expression blank.

"Well, forgive me," he snapped. "Three days ago my best friend _died_ and in four hours I'll have to bury him."

"You've been drinking non-stop for the last fifty-two."

"I think I'm entitled."

"Is that what Matt--"

Foggy hurled the glass so fast that it shocked both Marci and Matt. Matt doubly so as the glass flew straight through his chest before crashing into a pristine white wall behind him.

"I don't care about what Matt would have wanted," Foggy almost shouted. "Matt didn't care about _us_. Matt only cared about himself and his stupid decisions, he didn't give a shit about anything or anyone else. He went and got himself killed and I _hate him_ for it. So don't go telling me what Matt would have wanted for me. No one knows what Matt would have wanted because Matt never thought of that."

Matt bristled. That wasn't true. There were many things he wanted for Foggy and this – being drunk off his ass and out of his mind with grief and anger – was not one of them.

He tried to tell him that. He actually moved towards the couch, intent on comforting Foggy somehow.

When Foggy got up, he walked straight through Matt and didn't even notice.

2.

Foggy emerged from what presumably was his bedroom two hours later, dressed all in black.

Marci, who had been sitting on the vacated couch completely unaware of Matt perched right next to her, eyed him appraisingly.

She sighed. She got up, walked over to her handbag, grabbed something from it and made a beeline towards Foggy. She grabbed his chin.

"I'll put some concealer under your eyes," she warned him, "so that you don't look like someone's beaten you up."

"I don't care."

"I do," Matt whispered and Marci echoed him, "But I do."

She made a quick work of Foggy's eyes. Once done, she inspected her work. "It's waterproof," she informed him. "Just so you know."

"I won't cry."

"There is no shame in grieving."

"I won't," Foggy insisted. He sounded suspiciously sober. "I'm not sad. I'm fucking pissed."

Marci squeezed his arms. "Ready?"

"Just a moment." Foggy walked over to a cheap plastic bag lying on his coffee table. He searched through it before emerging with a little golden necklace in his hand that Matt recognised as his cross. Foggy put it over his neck and said, "Now I am."

3.

Standing at a cemetery, surrounded by maybe a dozen people, and watching a casket with his own body being lowered into the ground made Matt realise that he was nowhere near as freaked out as he ought to be.

Watching your own funeral was not something one should have a stoic and perfectly zen reaction to. He should be scared. He should be angry. He should be confused or desolate or at least something other than _huh_.

_Huh._ He died. He was dead and his body had been laid to rest and all he could muster was, _huh_.

On his right, Karen was sobbing uncontrollably. A guy with a beard and a hoodie – that looked altogether too much like Frank Castle, but everyone seemed too polite to mention anything – had an arm around her and was holding her closely.

Brett was there with his mother. Maggie, Matt's own mother, was standing a little further back, with a grim expression on her face and tight lips. She didn't look shocked. She looked as if she'd been expecting this and Matt felt a pang of anger. Behind her Luke, Danny and Jessica were standing apart and were pretending they didn't know each other.

And then there were the Nelsons. Anna, crying as openly as Karen, almost as if she had lost her own child. Edward, for all intents and purposes composed, but Matt could see his lower lip tremble even though he'd bit down on it. Theo, who was never very close to Matt, with his head bowed and a fist pressed to his mouth.

And Foggy. One hand in Marci's, the other balled into a fist, expression of absolute fury on his face and Matt's cross around his neck. He looked like someone who might snap and lose it at any moment.

And then it was all over and everyone went their separate ways. Anna tried to get people to go to the Nelsons' shop, but the mourners all politely refused and left. Even Foggy.

Foggy went home and once there, got himself a whole bottle of whiskey. Matt went with him, whether he wanted to or not.

"Foggy--" Marci started.

"I don't wanna talk."

Marci nodded. "I'll be here," she told him, "when you change your mind."

"I won't."

4\. 

Foggy went back to work two days later. He went in drunk, leaving Matt alone at the apartment with nothing to do and more locked doors.

Matt walked around the place looking out the windows and soaking up the sights of New York, something he thought he'd never see again in his life, but got to experience in death. Then he snooped around the apartment itself, grimacing every time he saw an empty bottle.

But there was only so much snooping one could take before getting bored to--well, not death, clearly. So he tried turning Marci's laptop on; his hand went right through it. He tried again, this time with Foggy's computer. Same result. He tried again. At fourth try he let out a furious cry and swooped his arm across the desk. The whiskey glass that Foggy left on it shattered as Matt's arm passed through it.

Matt blinked and looked at his arm.

Huh.

5.

The next time Matt became aware of his surroundings, Marci and Foggy were arguing. Foggy smelled of old alcohol and Marci was clearly at her wit's end.

And when she finally demanded that Foggy either make an effort to get himself marginally together or get out, Matt applauded her. Only Foggy, contrary to what Matt thought he'd do, grabbed his jacket and left.

Somehow pulling Matt behind him.

6\. 

When Foggy opened the door to Matt's apartment, Matt was first hit with a wave of elated nostalgia – he'd never had the chance to see his place before – and then the stench of something rotting.

Foggy coughed and went into the kitchen, Matt following right behind him. Foggy grabbed an empty trash bag and threw in everything that was left of Matt's counter. Rotten fruit. A rotten sandwich that he'd bought on his way back home from work the day he...

The day he died.

Time moved differently when you were dead. Or at least your perception of it was different. He wasn't sure how long it had been since--Since.

"Christ, Matty."

Matt raised his head to look at Foggy. His friend was standing by his kitchen counter, a trash bag in one hand and he was--staring. He was staring right at Matt.

"Foggy?" Matt asked, hardly daring to hope. Was it possible? After all this time, however long it had been?

Foggy took a shaky breath then let it out, closing his eyes. He dropped the bag onto the floor and leaned against the counter, braced on both arms. He let his head fall forwards and hang between his shoulders.

"Matty, fuck, Matty, _why_."

Another rattling breath. And then Foggy's shoulders started shaking, harder and harder. After that the sniffling came.

Shit.

Foggy was crying.

Matt's first instinct was to rush to his side and comfort him. To offer his words, however inadequate they might be, and a hand on his arm, maybe an arm around his shoulders.

His words that would be left unheard and his hand or his arm that would slide through Foggy without leaving a trace.

He'd give everything to be able to comfort Foggy again.

Meanwhile Foggy had let go of the countertop and slid down to sit on the floor of Matt's kitchen, with his back propped against the dishwasher and legs outstretched. He was no longer sniffling, but that was because his crying took on a silent quality; tears were streaming down the face of a man exhausted by grief. It was a messy and ugly thing that Matt had no desire to witness.

He sat down on the floor next to Foggy, keeping his legs bent at the knees and close to his chest. This close to Foggy – close enough to sense, but not close enough to touch – he could almost pretend that this was just another time he'd disappointed Foggy with his actions. Nothing more. Nothing worse.

They were just two friends sitting side by side with an invisible gulf between them. And neither of them was dead.

That was a nice fantasy.

"Why did you leave, Matt?" Foggy asked, voice more broken than Matt had ever heard it before.

"I never left," Matt replied. "I'm still _here_."

7.

There had to be a reason why he was still around. It just... It wasn't possible that he hung around just to witness how much his choices – his death – screwed up the people he cared about.

There had to be something he could do to help Foggy.

There just had to.

8.

After being stuck in what used to be his apartment and was now Foggy's hideout for days, Matt had come to a few conclusions.

One, he hated that place. It had never bothered him before, the lack of decoration, the gloominess of it – it wasn't like he was ever able to see any of that before – but he couldn't stand it now. Dying gave him his eyesight back; he wasn't able to see because his eyes were damaged, but he didn't have a physical body anymore so that was no longer an issue. Now he couldn't stop himself from taking everything in, from looking at things and drinking in all the sights like a man dying of thirst in a desert. And he _hated_ looking at his place. The emptiness of it and the colourless walls.

Two, he had to find a way to talk to Foggy. He just had to. And not only for Foggy's sake, although that was a big chunk of the reason why. Foggy was clearly not dealing, no matter what he told Anna and Edward when they called. Foggy was drowning in the shallow waters of his grief and Matt knew he would be able to save him if only he could tell him that he was fine, that he was still there.

That despite what Foggy thought, Matt hadn't left him. He hadn't abandoned him.

And if that wasn't possible then, well. Matt had to find a way out of this apartment. He couldn't just sit around, unable to do anything and watch Foggy do his best to destroy himself. He'd go crazy and while he didn't know what happened when ghosts went mad, he was sure it was nothing good.

If only there was a way to contact someone. Danny had a lot of weird friends and experience in occult shit. And there was that magician in the Village. One of them would know what to do. Hell, they might even know a way to get Matt's ghost back into his body.

Resurrections were possible. Matt didn't even have to be a Catholic to believe that, it was enough that he'd seen Elektra. Sure, he was scared of her _then_, but now, in hindsight, he knew that being a soulless killing machine but _alive_ was infinitely better than being plain dead.

Foggy was sitting on Matt's couch, feet propped up on Matt's coffee table, a wine glass full of vodka – Matt grimaced at that – in one hand and a file in the other. He was drinking himself to an early grave, but was also genuinely working and Matt was torn between feeling pride and worry.

Worry won out when Matt perched on the couch's backrest behind Foggy and scanned the text.

"Foggy," he breathed. "It's right _there_. Compare the records Brett gave us with the statement the opposing counsel provided. They don't match up."

Foggy put the wine glass on the coffee table and ran a hand across his eyes. "This is pointless," he murmured to himself.

"No, it's not," Matt insisted. "You just have to focus."

"There's nothing in here," Foggy carried on as he threw the folder on the ground behind the couch.

"Yes, there is," Matt said, annoyed, "and you'd see that too if you'd only stop drinking for one. Fucking. Minute."

Foggy reached out to pick up the wine glass and froze with his hand extended. "What the--"

Matt glanced at him. Then at the coffee table where the wine glass still stood, but on the opposite end of it from where Foggy had put it down. Almost as if...

Almost as if someone had moved it out of Foggy's reach in order to get him to stop drinking.

Foggy blinked a couple of times. "I'm too tired for this," he said into the silence of the flat.

Matt reached out and hovered his fingers and inch away from Foggy's hair. Close enough that he could pretend he'd be able to card his fingers through it if he tried.

"Yes," he replied, knowing fully well that Foggy wouldn't be able to hear him, "you are."

9.

Matt felt himself pulled forward, an upsetting sensation akin to being squeezed through a keyhole. When he opened his eyes what greeted him was not the bland and colourless emptiness of his old place, but the welcoming clutter of Karen's.

He was in Karen's kitchen and Foggy and Karen were in there too, sitting behind Karen's table and eating dumplings.

"Got any beer to go with this?" Foggy asked.

Karen shook her head. "Not a drop of alcohol in the entire house."

Foggy huffed. "What is this, an intervention?"

Matt looked around. Karen was right. All the bottles that he sensed the last time he was here were gone. But something else was here, clinging to various surfaces. The smell of Frank Castle's sweat. Matt glanced over at Karen. Once he would have worried, perhaps would even have a speech ready. But Karen knew how to take care of herself, didn't she?

There was no need to worry about her.

"... from Marci," Karen kept talking and Matt realised he'd tuned her out and lost part of the conversation. "But mostly it's just me wanting to tell you that I've been where you are. After Kevin's death, I've _been here_ and trust me, alcoholism doesn't help."

"It numbs it."

"Numbs what?"

Foggy's hand traveled to his neck and he began fiddling with what Matt noticed was the chain of his cross.

"Everything," Foggy whispered.

Karen nodded. "I've been there too. And it's not a place to live, Foggy. It's a place to die. This stuff will only destroy you."

Foggy opened his mouth to retort, but Matt never heard what he'd come up with because another voice filtered in.

"And who the hell are you?"

Matt turned around and saw a teenager standing in the doorway leading to Karen's bedroom. The kid was looking directly at him. And unlike all the times when Foggy stared right through him, he seemed to actually be able to _see him_.

**part III: bargaining**

1.

"Are... are you talking to me?"

The teenager rolled his eyes. "Obviously," he said. Then he pointed his chin in Foggy's direction. "I mean, I know who that is. You I've never seen before. It's not often I get to see a fellow ghost drop by."

A fellow... "A fellow ghost?"

The kid nodded. "You are one, you know that, right?"

"Yeah." Matt waved his hand. "So that's why we can talk. That's why you can see me. Because we're both dead."

"Well, not exactly," the kid said, "but it takes time and effort to manifest to humans and, yeah. You're still new. I'm Kevin, by the way."

Matt squeezed the hand the kid extended. God, it felt so good to finally be able to touch something.

"I'm Matt." And then it hit him. "Kevin? As in Karen's little brother Kevin?"

Kevin smiled. "Wow, you've heard of me. I'm glad she's finally talking about me again. She kept quiet for so long I was beginning to worry she'd never speak of me again."

"You died." Kevin made a face and mouthed, duh. "How exactly are you here?"

"I missed my door," Kevin said. "Same as you."

Matt must have looked confused at that, because Kevin continued: "When you die, you see a door. To the Afterlife. If you go through, you move on. If not, you linger behind. I stayed behind because I was worried about Karen. So now I keep her company."

"I don't remember any door."

"You chose to stay behind so clearly you passed on that. But that's okay, most folks don't remember. I think it helps not feel regret."

Kevin moved to Karen's living room and sat down on her sofa. He glanced at Matt; he arched an eyebrow and patted the space next to him. Matt followed. He was peripherally aware that behind them, in the kitchen, Foggy and Karen were deep in conversation, oblivious to the two ghosts.

"You know other ghosts?"

"Sure," Kevin said. "The first one I met in the flat Karen was renting when she first moved to the city. I was so confused back then. Freshly dead, tied to my sister and dragged everywhere she went. That's when I met Nettie. She haunts that building. Lived there in the 1920s, stayed behind. It was nice having someone to talk to. She taught me everything I know.

"About what?"

"Being a ghost." Kevin shrugged. "She's had a lot of experience and I was just a kid who's never even left Vermont. Thanks to Nettie I got to experience life in a big city. And, well." Kevin dropped his eyes and Matt was sure that if he were still in the possession of a proper cardiovasculatory system, he'd be blushing. "And other things too."

He didn't want to know what other things Karen's dead little brother meant.

"I could introduce you to Nettie," Kevin offered. "She knows all the best places in New York and is a great chess player."

Matt snorted. "How? I'm trapped in my apartment usually. I can't leave."

"You just have to nick the thing your soul is tied to." Kevin rolled his eyes at Matt's raised brows. "You really know nothing, huh? Ghosts are tied to something that was important to them when they were alive. For me it's a friendship bracelet that Karen made for me when we were kids. Before I figured out how to interact with the material world and how to take the bracelet away, I was dragged everywhere too. And believe me, it was annoying."

Matt looked at him, this time with interest. "How do you do that? Interact?"

"It takes lots of willpower, focus and patience. And can be draining. And I mean it," Kevin glanced at Matt sharply, "when I say 'draining'. The first few tried would knock me out for weeks at a time. But I got better. And now I can take my bracelet any time I want to go and see a Broadway show."

"Wow."

"Yeah."

Behind them, Karen asked, "Are you sure you don't want me to get you an Uber?"

Foggy snorted. "I'm painfully sober and live close-by. I'll be _fine_, Karen. I'll see you tomorrow at work."

"Alright," Karen said. Then she hugged Foggy. "Take care of yourself."

Matt turned to Kevin. "I guess that's my cue. I guess I'll... see you around?"

"I'll try to stop by and visit." Kevin grinned. "Might even bring some friends over. We could have a party!"

Matt nodded then closed his eyes, readying himself for another round of the tight squeezing sensation.

2.

It never came.

3.

"You're still here."

Matt cracked one eye open and was greeted by the sight of Kevin's face hovering over him and Karen's back in the kitchen.

"I know," he said. "Why?"

"Whatever you're tied to, your friend Foggy must have accidentally left it behind."

Kevin got up and went over to the kitchen. Unbothered, he passed straight through Karen and began inspecting the kitchen table. After a moment he let out a triumphant 'ah-ha!'. "Did you by any chance own a gold cross when alive?"

"Yes."

Kevin pointed at the floor by the chair that Foggy had vacated. "It must have unclasped and fallen off."

Karen was done cleaning the dishes and was now holding a phone. Matt could see her dial a number and wait for the connection. "Frank? Hey, yeah, Foggy just left. I have some leftover curry for you if you'd like to stop by."

"So what, I'm stuck here now?" Matt asked.

"Not for long. Kay works with Foggy, she'll take your cross back to him tomorrow. I'll just have to move it so that she finds it."

Kevin face scrunched in focus and Matt saw him reach for the necklace. To his amazement, Kevin's hand didn't glide through it, but instead his fingers clasped around it and he picked the thing up. Seeing Karen busy with her back to the kitchen counter, Kevin dropped the cross onto its surface.

"He's... he's not great," she was saying. "I mean, we're all not that great, but Foggy is taking it the hardest. For all that he claimed to know that Matt's hobby would be the death of him, I don't think he truly thought it would happen."

The person on the other side of the call made a long comment on that. Karen was quiet for good five minutes before, "I think Matt surviving Midland Circle fooled us into thinking that he was invulnerable. I don't know, immortal."

Matt looked away.

"Yes, Frank, I _know_ immortality isn't real," Karen huffed. "It was just a nice thing to delude yourself with. Yeah. Yeah, okay. I'll see you in an hour. Come safe, I love you."

Karen disconnected and sighed. She put her phone down and turned around; frowned when she noticed Matt's cross on the counter.

"Mortals are so simple," Kevin commented, not taking his eyes off his sister. "More than happy to dismiss anything potentially supernatural."

Karen, still frowning, picked up the cross and went to drop it in her purse.

4.

An hour later, Frank Castle arrived at Karen's place.

Together they ate the leftover Chinese and Frank held Karen as she cried.

"He's good for her," Kevin said, "even though he's super creepy."

Matt felt bad.

5.

The next morning, Matt found himself back at their office.

Foggy was sitting behind his desk when Karen came in, his eyes more puffy and bloodshot than they were the night before at Karen's, and with his fingers massaging his temples. He hissed when Karen greeted him.

So, a hangover.

"Oh, Foggy," Matt whispered.

The door to Matt's office was closed, but through the glass panel of the door Matt could see that nothing inside had been moved. All his papers, all his books, even his laptop were exactly where he'd left them when he left the office for the last time.

"I stocked up on Tylenol," Karen said softly.

"Thanks," grumbled Foggy.

She nodded. Her hand found its way into her purse and she took out Matt's cross. She dropped it onto Foggy's desk. "You left it at my place yesterday."

Foggy stared at the cross, hesitant to touch it. He almost did, then withdrew his fingers. He glanced at Karen instead. "Thank you."

"Sure." Karen drummed her fingers on Foggy's desk. "I scheduled two interviews today. The first one in two hours."

"Interviews for what?"

"The associate position?" Karen inclined her head towards the closed door of Matt's office. "We need an extra pair of hands."

Foggy grit his teeth. "No."

"Foggy..."

"No. We're not replacing Matt today."

"Foggy, you can't deal with our caseload all by yourself. You can barely keep it together long enough to come in, most days. We need help."

"I said no."

Karen's gaze softened, along with her tone. "We're not replacing him, Foggy."

Foggy closed his eyes. "I know," he said. "Just... not today, Karen. Please."

"Alright. I'll reschedule. But next week."

"Next week," Foggy repeated.

When Karen left, Foggy went back to pressing his temples and sporadically hissing in pain.

"She's just trying to help, Fog," Matt said.

His comment, of course, produced no reaction.

6.

Matt almost jumped out of his metaphorical skin one day – after Foggy had forgotten the cross on Matt's dresser and got Matt stuck at the apartment for the day – when Kevin simply materialised in the middle of his living room.

"Hey, Matt," Kevin greeted him warmly, then pointed to a young woman who popped out of thin air next to him. "This is Nettie. Nettie, Matt."

"Hi," Nettie said sweetly.

She was a pretty girl of about twenty, dressed in a fancy 1920s cocktail dress. Her fiery red hair reached her chin and was parted on one side. She had bright green eyes which twinkled with good-natured mischief. She was, of course, utterly dead.

"Nice to meet you."

Kevin whistled. "Nice place you've got here. Yours?"

"Used to be," Matt said. "I think now it's Foggy's, technically."

"Huh." Kevin clapped and rubbed his hands together. "Your friend isn't here, but you are, so I guess he got you stuck today."

Matt shrugged.

"How about," Kevin continued, "we spring you out and take you on a little tour of the ghostly New York?"

"Can you teach me to get out of here on my own?"

Kevin and Nettie exchanged looks. "Sure," Nettie said. "Can't promise you'll get a hang of it at first try though."

"I'm a fast learner," Matt assured her.

Nettie patted him on the back. "Of course you are," she said, smiling sweetly. "So. Your object?"

Matt took her to the bedroom where the cross lay still on the dresser. Nettie's brows rose in amused confusion.

"A cross?" she asked. "Very... 1700s of you. I once knew a monk who was tied to a cross, too. Challenging man."

"What's yours?"

Nettie's hands flew to her ears. "My earrings," she said. "Was wearing them when that stupid torpedo bumped me off. Took me years to perfect carrying them around with me."

Matt blinked. He looked over to Kevin, who was grinning like an idiot, and mouthed, "What?"

"Nettie here," Kevin pointed at the young woman, "was murdered in her bed by a guy her lover hired."

A beat.

"Wow," was the only thing that made it past Matt's lips.

Nettie looked at Matt through her long eyelashes and curtsied. Honest to God curtsied. "A gal had to start somewhere."

"Alright, okay." Matt pointed at the cross. "Let's focus."

Nettie clicked her tongue. "Focus, yes, you need lots of that. And intent. You're trying to force yourself to interact on _their_ plane of existence."

"I've moved a glass before," Matt remembered. "And shattered another."

"Consciously?" Matt shook his head. "Raw anger won't get you far, bluenose. It'll only get you in big trouble. Now look."

With a look of pure concentration Nettie touched Matt's cross. She ran her fingers over the gold necklace then gently picked it up.

"Just like that," she said, swinging the necklace around her finger. "Your turn."

With that she dropped the necklace into Matt's hand. It fell straight through it and landed on the hard wood of the dresser.

"That could have worked better."

"A little warning next time?" Irritation stole into Matt's voice. "I wasn't ready."

"I always found that necessity was the best motivator." Nettie motioned the cross. "Come on. Try again."

7.

When Foggy came home almost at midnight, reeking of bar smoke and cheap whiskey, they were still there, in the bedroom, huddled around the dresser, the cross stubbornly in the same place where Nettie dropped it hours ago.

Matt was so frustrated by his lack of progress that he almost didn't mind how Foggy reached right through his abdomen to open one of the drawers and then how he _left it open_ in the middle of Matt's stomach. Or where his stomach used to be.

"Nettie," Kevin said, "it's time for us."

Nettie glanced at Foggy's alarm clock. "Goodness! Look at the time. We've been here all day." Kevin nodded. "We really need to get going."

"You're leaving me here?" Matt asked. In a very whiny voice. He was whining and he knew that.

"No worries, bluenose," Nettie patted his back again, "we'll be back. It always takes time. It took me six years to be able to touch something. You just be patient."

"The good news is," Kevin winked at him, "that as a dead guy, you have nothing but time."

And with that they disappeared.

"Fuck," Matt cursed.

8.

He threw himself onto the couch next to Foggy.

"My day," Foggy said out loud, "was absolutely crappy."

Matt snorted. "Tell me about it."

"I blew the cross-examination and I'm sure out client is going to lose. I can't get anything done."

"At least you're not failing at _touching_ something." Matt shook his head. "It shouldn't be this difficult."

"Karen's trying to help," Foggy carried on, oblivious to Matt and unable to hear him, "and I know that. I appreciate it. But she's not _you_, Matt."

Matt's head snapped towards Foggy so fast he'd have heard his bones, had he been alive.

"I can't do it without you, Matty," Foggy was saying and the flatness, deadness of his voice would have raised hairs on Matt's arms. "I don't want to do it without you."

Matt tried to press his palm to Foggy's cheek. "Foggy..."

Foggy raised his hand and touched his cheek, fingers landing exactly over Matt's. "I don't want to do it at all anymore," he whispered.

Matt felt an icy hand squeeze his imaginary heart.

No.

Oh _no._

**part IV: depression**

1.

As Nettie had said: necessity was the best motivator.

2.

"I can't wait six years to learn," Matt told Nettie as they sat on a bench in Central Park.

Nettie had appeared in Matt's living room that morning as Foggy was getting ready for work. She grabbed Matt's cross from the dresser – and Foggy hadn't even noticed it disappearing – then grabbed Matt's arm and, before Matt could have asked what was going on, popped them up just outside the entrance to the park.

"Impatience isn't going to get you anywhere," Nettie scolded him gently.

"I don't _have_ the time," Matt insisted. "I need to. I need to do something, to somehow contact my friend. I think--I worry he might try to hurt himself."

Nettie looked over at Matt. She bit her lip and worried it between her teeth. "Leaving messages is a little easier than moving material objects," she finally conceded. "Strong, violent emotions like fear, or, or anger, are enough to start water in the bathroom. Fog up the place, you know?"

"What the hell for?"

"To leave a message?" Nettie gave him a pitying look. "Write it on the mirror. We have no body heat so it's only a matter of running your fingers over the fogged up surface."

"And humans can see it."

"It's not a novel concept," Nettie said. "Kevin has shown me enough horror films for me to know that."

"So what do I do?"

"Instead of focusing your intent on trying to get a material object to interact with us on our plane of existence, you take a strong emotion and push it outward. You--" Nettie wrought her hands. "It's like you're trying to destroy it."

"Destroy it," Matt repeated. The next words he laced with as much sarcasm and disdain as he could muster. "Destroying my best friend's faucet will help me keep him from killing himself."

Nettie shook her head. "If you don't want my help, I'll just drop you off at home. Or better yet," she glared at him, "I could just drop your cross here and leave you to fend for yourself."

Matt raised his hands in a peacemaking gesture. "Sorry, sorry. Get angry at the washbasin, fine."

"Just... not too angry."

Matt frowned. "Why not?"

"No one likes angry ghosts. They're trouble."

3.

A bottle of pills appeared in the bathroom one afternoon. Matt eyed it with suspicion, but Foggy didn't seem to want to make use of it. It was merely there. Perhaps as insurance. Perhaps as a way out.

4.

In the end it wasn't the pills or even the worry that made Matt snap. It was Foggy's uncharacteristic incompetence.

Despite having promised Karen, Foggy still hadn't interviewed any New Matts. In his pig-headed attempt to honour his late friend and partner, he decided to go at it alone. Flying solo.

Dumb plan.

So Foggy was now making mistakes and Matt was trying to tear his hair out, which of course wasn't working because he was dead and neither his hands nor his hair were real and solid.

"I can't believe you're not seeing it," Matt ranted, pacing back and forth in front of his couch where Foggy was currently sitting. "Your client is lying through her teeth. I know she probably has a sob story and you want to help, but she's using you. You're going to lose and your reputation can't take another hit."

Foggy remained motionless, staring at his file. Matt let out a frustrated moan.

"Fuck that," he murmured to himself.

He strode into his bathroom where he looked at the washbasin. Violent emotions, huh? Yeah, he could do that. Even alive he had enough rage in him to gift six people and his anger management only got worse since he died.

Matt stared at the faucet. He stared and then stared some more. Nothing happened. He stared harder. He put all his anger, at himself, at Foggy, at those goons that got him killed, into that stare. And little by little, the faucet knob turned. Water started flowing.

Matt let out a laugh. "Well I'll be damned."

He waved a hand and hot water started pouring out, fogging up the bathroom. He heard footsteps outside and soon Foggy walked into the bathroom.

"What the hell?"

Foggy tried to turn the knob, but Matt kept it in place. Oh no. No, no, no. Absolutely not.

He moved to stand in front of the mirror and extended his hand. His finger traced the letters on the mirror's surface, not close enough to touch, but close enough to have his lack of temperature influence the heated glass.

Foggy finally gave up on trying to turn the water off. He looked up and it took him a moment to understand what he was seeing, but when he did, he let out an undignified yelp and scrambled backwards.

On the mirror the words HARRISON IS LYING were slowly disappearing.

Foggy was breathing heavily and Matt could hear his heart stutter in pure terror.

"What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck," Foggy was repeating like a mantra. "What. The. Fuck."

Matt allowed the mirror to fog up again before writing on it, slowly and deliberately.

MATT

5.

"That's not possible," Foggy said for the seventh time.

He was huddling a bottle of beer close to his chest and was rocking himself back and forth on the couch. Possible shock. Foggy took a swig of his beer, but his hands were shaking so much most of it landed on his shirt.

Matt closed his eyes and sighed.

"I know you can't hear me," he said, "nor see me, but this is ridiculous."

"I'm going crazy," Foggy whispered. "Marci is right. I've finally lost it. Gone completely cuckoo."

He put the bottle on the coffee table, right next to where Matt was sitting.

"I'm seeing things." Foggy sounded as if he was trying to convince himself. "Too much alcohol, too much grief."

"Foggy." The lights in the room flickered.

"I've gone bonkers. All trains have left the station. Absolutely cray-cray."

"FOGGY!"

The beer bottle exploded, spilling its contents all around. Foggy yelped and jumped on the couch. He glanced around with wild eyes.

He licked his lips. "M--Matty?"

6.

The next day Foggy came back home sober and in the possession of an ouija board. A fucking ouija board.

Which would have been funny if, one, Matt didn't know for certain that they _could_ use it to communicate, and two, weren't unable to use it to communicate because Matt couldn't force his immaterial hands to interact with anything.

Foggy set it up on the coffee table and was observing it expectantly.

"Matty?" he asked. "Are you really here?"

"Yes, I'm here," Matt grumbled.

The board remained unmoved. The small flicker of hope that Matt saw in Foggy's eyes died out.

Foggy shook his head. "Completely bonkers."

7.

"I need your help," Matt said when Kevin popped up in his apartment about a human month after the ouija fail.

"Hello to you too," Kevin replied. "I thought you might want to join me, Nettie and a couple of friends for a Hadestown matinee?"

Matt never really liked Broadway. It was always more of a Foggy thing.

"No," he said, "but thank you. I need your help."

"With what?"

Matt pointed to the ouija board, now all boxed up and collecting dust under the coffee table. Foggy had given up on it after two weeks.

Kevin whistled. "Still no luck on moving things on your own?"

Matt shook his head. "I'm trying, but it's taking too long. I need to talk to him. I tried the fogged up mirrors like Nettie sug--"

"Ow, ow." Kevin grimaced. "You didn't."

"I did. Nettie said it was simple."

"It is," Kevin admitted, "but it usually scares people shitless. Nettie loves it, but she's also made it her business to scare people shitless."

Matt closed his eyes. "Now he thinks he's crazy," he said after a moment of silence had stretched on for too long.

"A sensible reaction, all things considered."

"How did Karen react?"

Kevin laughed. But he stopped when he noticed Matt wasn't laughing alongside him. "You're being serious?"

"Yes."

"I never contacted Karen," Kevin said, voice full of disbelief, as if Matt's question was the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard in his life, "are you crazy? That's, like, the worst idea ever. She already blames herself for my death. Now imagine what she'd be like if she knew that I'd missed my door because I was worried about her and that now I'm stuck here."

Matt imagined that. He didn't like that picture so he dismissed it. "Will you help me?" he asked instead.

Kevin let out a long-suffering sigh. "I will."

8.

When Foggy came back home, the ouija board was lying on top of the coffee table.

Foggy almost dropped his briefcase on it. He cocked his head to the side in confusion – after all, he remembered putting it back in the box – before dismissing the thought. He must have forgotten that he'd taken it out again.

Kevin was right: mortals were so simple.

Kevin was sitting criss-cross on the floor next to the table. "You'll need to get his attention."

"That much I can do," Matt said. "I got really proficient at flickering the lights."

He waved a hand and all the lights in the apartment started going on and off. In the kitchen, Foggy froze.

"This isn't happening," he said out loud.

Matt grinned at Kevin. "I can also do this," he told the kid and snapped his fingers. Immediately, the bedroom door slammed shut. Foggy startled and dropped a yoghurt he was eating.

"Nice," Kevin said, impressed.

Foggy put down his spoon and walked towards the bedroom, slow and hesitant.

"Kev, you're up."

Kevin grabbed the planchette and started moving it all across the board. This wasn't supposed to be a message of any kind, just a demonstration to get Foggy to pay attention. Which seemed to be working.

Foggy was looking at the board. "... Matt?"

"Showtime," Kevin murmured and moved the planchette to YES.

Foggy sucked in a breath. "This can't be happening. It can't. I've gone mad. I've completely lost all my marbles."

NO.

"It's--It's really you?"

YES.

Foggy shook his head. "I don't--I don't--"

"He's not taking this well," Kevin commented helpfully.

"Shut up," Matt snapped. Come on, Foggy.

Foggy dropped to his knees onto the floor and sat down on his heels. He licked his lips. "Okay," he said, taking in a deep breath and trying to stay calm, "tell me something only the real Matt would know."

What? Matt glanced at Kevin. Kevin glanced at Matt. "Is he expecting you to spell his biggest secrets one letter at a time?"

"I don't know," Matt said, honestly perplexed.

Foggy was worrying his lip between his teeth, deep in thought. He must have broken skin because Matt could see droplets of blood on his teeth. This was a chance for Matt to finally take a good and long look at him. And Matt didn't like what he was seeing.

Foggy had lost more weight than he'd thought. His suit was hanging awkwardly off him and his cheeks had taken on a sunken quality. And he looked so _sad_; had about him the air of someone who had lost everything, someone who had nothing more to lose, of someone who had given up.

Matt thought about the bottle of pills hidden in his bathroom and wondered if it was just tiredness and lack of care that kept Foggy from swallowing its contents rather than any actual will to live.

Kevin pinched the bridge of his nose. "I know you don't go out and know a lot of folks," he said and didn't even bother masking the annoyance in his voice, "and that you asked for my help, and that you were my sister's friend, yadda yadda, but seriously? I'm missing out on a Beyonce concert for this?"

If looks could kill, and Kevin wasn't dead already thus making this whole thought experiment redundant, the teen would have dropped dead, squashed by the intensity of Matt's murderous glare.

Kevin wasn't Karen's flesh and blood for nothing though, and he not only didn't cower under Matt's scrutiny, he raised his chin defiantly.

"This is pointless," he said. "Your friend over there is in the middle of an existentional crisis and I don't have the time to wait for him to get his act together. I have places to be."

"What happened to the 'as a ghost you have nothing but time' crap?"

"You do," Kevin shot back, "but unlike you, I actually have a life."

"Funny, I thought we were all dead here."

"Personal life. You know what I mean."

"Kevin. This is _important_."

"I'm sure it is. But until your friend here gives any indication that he's still with us, we're wasting our time. You're wasting my time. And that says a lot considering that I'm a timeless being with almost infinite deposits of it."

Matt wondered if he could punch a ghost. He was tempted to try and find out for himself, would even do it, Karen's little brother or not, but Foggy's voice snapped him out of his angry reverie.

"Matt? Are you... still here?"

Matt kept glaring at Kevin. Kevin cleared his throat. "He's expecting an answer."

Matt looked up. The lights in the room flickered. Foggy looked torn between disbelief, tentative hope and being scared shitless.

"If you're really Matt," Foggy said, "tell me this: what did I say to you after you told me you were the Man in the Mask?"

9.

Matt thought back to that fateful night of his fight with Nobu.

He thought about the hook lodging itself in his flesh and of being dragged across the floor by his insides. He thought about waking up in pain. He thought about the stench of blood. He thought about the utter and stone cold fear he felt when he realised Foggy was in his kitchen.

He remembered the pain, the physical pain of his Claire-stitched wounds, and the much deeper and more cutting pain of Foggy's anger and disappointment. He remembered trying and failing to explain everything to Foggy. He remembered Foggy pacing in his living room, the sound of Foggy's heart deafening, and he remembered not being sure if Foggy's heart was beating like a drum in anger or in worry.

He remembered Foggy staying with him the whole day. He remembered the disgusting tuna-noodles-ketchup combo Foggy made for him.

He remembered exchanging hurtful words. He remembered crying, and he remembered the smell of Foggy's tears and he remembered Foggy slamming the door on his way out, and he remembered the sound of his own heart breaking in half.

He remembered everything about that day and he would remember it until the day he died. And even beyond that, it seemed.

10.

"Matt? Are you going to respond?" Kevin asked. "Or are you going to just stand there and look like you're about to cry? Ghosts can't cry, in case you didn't know that."

"Matt?" echoed Foggy.

"What _did_ he say to you? I'm asking as your spiritual interpreter, not out of curiosity."

"Nothing," Matt murmured.

Kevin raised his brows. He didn't believe him.

"Tell him that," Matt said sharply. Kevin shrugged, but obediently began moving the planchette around the board. "And then tell him..."

"Yes?"

"Tell him that it was because I had never told him."

11.

"Oh God," Foggy's voice broke on the second syllable, becoming all but inaudible, quiet but sharp like a punched-out breath, "oh _God_, Matt."

N-E-V-E-R-T-O-L-D were the words that Kevin had signed out for Matt.

"God had nothing to do with it," the kid grumbled.

"I'm here, Foggy," Matt said, ignoring Kevin. "I'm here, I never left, I promised you wouldn't lose me."

"God, _God_, Matty," Foggy babbled wetly. He was crying. Matt hadn't seen him cry since the day he came to his apartment and now that he'd started, it seemed like a dam broke and he just couldn't stop. "Matty, you're here, I thought I lost you."

Tears were running down Foggy's cheeks, a trickle of snot was making its way down his chin and dropping onto his shirt. It was utterly disgusting.

Matt had never loved him more.

Foggy raised a trembling hand as if expecting a high five or a press of palms. He let out a choked breath.

"Do you two need some privacy?" Kevin asked.

"Just shut up."

"I thought you left me," Foggy whispered.

Matt kneeled on the floor opposite him, scooted closer and raised his own hand. He pressed it forward, stopping a hair's breadth away from Foggy's palm. Almost touching. Almost together. Almost real.

"I'm not sure I could ever leave you."

12.

Foggy fell asleep on the floor. Not the best spot, and his neck was bent at an awkward angle – he was going to be miserable come morning, but thankfully it was the weekend.

Matt wanted to wake him up, get him to go to bed, but with his immaterial hands going through his shoulders, he had no way of doing that. And Kevin had bailed some time ago.

"I'm glad you and your friend had your chat," Kevin had said before leaving, "but it's late and I'm meeting Nettie in the morning. So, gotta go."

"And what if I need to say something to him?"

"Use the mirror," Kevin told him like it was the most obvious thing in the world, "or freeze something and scratch in that. Ghosts can create cold spots; you've figured out the lights so lowering temperature shouldn't be a problem. And he shouldn't get spooked any more."

"What if it doesn't work?"

Kevin sighed. "You really need to learn to interact on your own." He patted his pockets, making sure the friendship bracelet was safely tucked inside. "Time for me. Ciao, bitch."

Ciao bitch? Matt was still trying to wrap his head around that one. Kevin hadn't picked that one up at home or from Karen, and most certainly not from Nettie. What kind of company was that kid keeping after death?

"Matt?"

Matt glanced at the floor. Foggy was up – well, awake – and was looking at the board expectantly.

Great.

Matt walked over to the bathroom and turned the water on. The sound startled Foggy; he got up from the floor and followed Matt. Soon the mirror in the bathroom was covered in a sheet of fog.

Foggy frowned. "Why not the board," he asked.

CAN'T.

The frown deepened. "You could last night."

FRIEND HELPED. Matt let the message fog up. HE LEFT.

"Ghost friend?"

YES.

"Weird," Foggy muttered. "Really weird. Good weird, don't get me wrong, but weird."

"You have no idea," Matt said under his breath.

Foggy clicked his tongue. Swayed on the balls of his feet. Matt waited patiently for him to gather his thoughts. "So... How are you here?"

A couple of possible answers flashed through Matt's mind, none of them accurate enough and none of them something he could properly explain, even to himself. The truth was, he wasn't sure.

CROSS, was what he chose to say.

"Cross. Your cross?"

YES.

"So you're like, what, tied to it or something?"

Matt raised his brows. YES. He waited a beat. HOW U KNO?

"Fourteen years of watching _Supernatural_ with Theo." Foggy grinned. _Grinned_. Matt hadn't seen him so much as smile since his death. "I can't believe that show is actually right about something."

Matt almost wrote 'huh', but decided against it. Waste of energy and effort. The silence would be a comment enough.

Foggy's grin faltered a little. "Okay. Ghost Matt. What kind of spoopy things can you do?"

That wasn't going to be an impressive list. MIRRORS. FOG. A beat. FLICKER LIGHTS. A beat. COLD???

"I could use some cold about now," Foggy said and Matt heard the edge of discomfort in his voice. "It's... stuffy in here."

Now that he looked properly, Matt could see sweat running down the side of Foggy's face. With the water running non-stop for the past quarter of an hour, it had to be hot in there. Not that Matt could feel it.

"Mind if we leave?"

END TALK, Matt wrote on the mirror. A warning; he wasn't able to do this anywhere but in the bathroom.

Foggy's face went slack, expression blank, but Matt caught a flicker of disappointment in his eyes.

"Oh," he said. "That's--okay. Thanks for letting me know."

He left the bathroom. Matt frowned, took a second look at the message and groaned.

Oh, fuck.

13.

"It's just not working," Matt concluded. "Knight to C3."

Nettie moved his piece before moving her own knight. "Writing on mirrors _is_ an ineffective method of communication long-term."

"Right?" Matt studied the board. "Pawn to A3. The ouija board isn't much better, but at least with that we don't have to deal with all the fog. And the water bills are smaller."

Nettie hummed in response and moved her pawn to D5.

"You have to teach me to move things," Matt carried on. "I could type on a computer. Or better yet, teach me to manifest. Pawn takes D5."

"It's not something that can be taught, Matthew." Nettie's knight took Matt's pawn. "It's something that comes to you with experience. Or."

"Bishop to E2. Or what?"

"Or gets prompted by a violent emotional outburst."

"Violent? As in, negative? Knight takes E4."

Nettie knocked her pawn off the board. "Anger works best, of course, but is inherently dangerous to us. I've heard fear works well too. A friend of mine, Lyla, she moved here from Oregon a couple of years ago, died of leukemia, poor gal. Her husband recently remarried and Lyla haunts his new wife. She's apparently a terrible hag."

"I castle. The point, Nettie."

Nettie glared at him and took his bishop. "Lyla knew this guy back in Oregon, Dave. He was a newbie just like you. From what I've heard, he was shaken into the mortal plane interaction when he was riding in a car with his sister. She was drunk and was going to crash the car, and Dave got so scared that he yanked the steering wheel and saved his sister's life."

"That can happen? Queen takes E2."

"I've never met anyone who didn't work their way to their abilities the old fashioned way, but... I don't see why that would be impossible."

"So all I have to do is wait for Foggy to end up in mortal peril so that I can then jump in and save him," Matt said, sarcasm oozing from every syllable. "Foolproof plan. What could possibly go wrong with that. Knight to F6, check and mate."

"Even if that happens, you'd have to be with him. _And_ it'd have to work. Otherwise your friend would just," Nettie splayed her hands, "end up dead."

"Great. We could haunt places together."

"You presume," Nettie said with a small, sad smile.

"Presume what?"

"That he'd stay behind. That he'd pass on his door just like you did. Most people move on, Matthew."

That was a sobering thought, that there was a very real possibility that Foggy could move on while knowing that Matt stuck around, that Matt was here. And then what? And then he'd be all alone.

14.

"Are you sure you can't taste the food if you move through it?"

Matt didn't dignify that with an answer.

"Okay," Foggy grumbled, "no need for the silent treatment, geez. Back to the caseload."

"That's a good idea," Matt said.

"That's probably a good idea, I have a court date in three days and two of our witnesses dropped out."

That was news. The lights flickered. "What the hell happened?"

Foggy kept his head tilted back, observing the ceiling lights. "I assume you want to know what happened. Well. Remember that tenement case we worked on months ago, the one that people were sent threats over? Yeah. The goons have expanded their business and are now blackmailing witnesses. It's fun times at the office, Matt."

Oh boy.

Matt grimaced. He got up from the couch – stretched, sighed the most long-suffering sigh he could muster and went over to the bathroom. He glared at the washbasin, which didn't have the grace to explode under scrutiny, and turned the water on.

Tedious.

In the living room, Foggy muttered a tired, "Fuck," before getting up and joining Matt. He leaned against the doorframe with his arms crossed over his chest and an unhappy expression on his face, radiating the general air of someone who considered this an enormous chore.

"What?" he asked. His tone made it clear that he was expecting unpleasantness and was braced for it.

Great.

Distantly, Matt realised that Foggy had had a crappy day, was overworked and tired and frustrated. He realised that he himself had had a terrible day stuck in the apartment after Kevin failed to show, that he was annoyed and frustrated by his lack of progress with anything, even if he wasn't tired because dead people just didn't _get_ tired.

Probably not the best mood to have important, possibly life-changing conversations in.

Just great. Matt's terrible track record when it came to making sensible and smart decisions wasn't going to be improved post-mortem.

WHO? he wrote on the mirror.

Foggy raised one shoulder in a shrug. "Like I know. Goons who work for those incorporated sleazebags."

NAMES?

"Why do you even want to know? Are you planning on haunting them?" Foggy asked mockingly. Then he sombered. "Wait, could you?"

Theoretically he could, but would require him to possess skills which he did not, so he decided not to fill Foggy in on that.

DANGEROUS.

Foggy tsked. "Your concern is appreciated, but there isn't a lot you could do here, buddy. I am thankful for all the help brainstorming cases, but the rest I just have to do alone. Like the meeting at Sleazebag Central tomorrow."

Well, Foggy could employ someone in Matt's place, but the last time Matt had suggested that, Foggy ignored him for a week straight. Matt wasn't going to risk that happening again. He'd managed to get used to talking to Foggy and going back to the silence was unacceptable.

GO W/U, he wrote instead.

"What for?"

SPY? Foggy snorted at that. INVISIBLE.

"Okay, point taken."

DANGEROUS.

"I can't believe you of all people are motherhenning me from beyond the grave," Foggy grumbled. But the corners of his mouth lifted in a small smile. "_Fine_."

GO W/U?

"I'll regret that, but yes. I'll take you."

=)

"You have no idea how _weird_ this is," Foggy murmured, seemingly irritated, but Matt couldn't help but notice that Foggy was blushing. It looked adorable on him.

"You underestimate just how much my definition of 'weird' has changed."

15.

Their visit to Sleazebag Central, as Foggy had called it, yielded no results. The incorporated douchebags were an honest-to-God company, complete with a fully-staffed and fully-equipped legal department. That they were apparently in the business of undervaluing property and trying to steal it from owners and also intimidating anyone who might try to stand in their way was a whole different matter.

The trip to Sleazebag Central has been worth it for a couple of reasons, however. First of all, Matt got to _see_ Foggy in action. The last time he'd seen Foggy in proper corporate setting as a lawyer, they'd been partners and Matt had been alive. He'd wandered what a post-Matt Foggy might be like. Sure, after they'd parted the first time he'd thrived at HC&B and then at Hogarth's own firm. But every time he was with Matt, he'd somehow... fall to the background. Allow Matt to take the lead, as if competing with the whirlwind force of Matt's personality was too much of a task.

Matt hadn't been sure how Foggy would fare in a post-Matt world. Working for Hogarth had been different; for all their animosities and differences, Matt had been there. A phone call away. Foggy must have drawn a certain comfort from that. Even after--even after Midland Circle it was different. That time, Foggy hadn't had a body to bury.

Well. Matt had been dead for the past nine months and Foggy had to learn to cope with that. And by God, he was glorious

Matt was itching to tell Foggy how proud he was. How proud he was of how Foggy carried their legacy and how touched he was that the office was still Nelson and Murdock despite the fact that the Murdock part had been dearly departed for almost as long as he'd actually got to work at that firm.

Of course he had to wait until they got home to express such sentiments.

"I think we killed it in there today, Matty," Foggy murmured as they walked home that night.

He was fiddling with the cross on his neck. Karen had noticed it, but made no comment. She'd just glanced at Foggy from time to time, concerned, worrying her lip between her teeth and looking like a person who had a lot to say, but lacked the proper words.

"You did," Matt said. Then frowned.

There were people walking behind them.

_Shit_.

He didn't--He didn't--He should have, earlier, he should have--He hadn't noticed. And Foggy was still not noticing.

Fuck.

"Foggy," Matt said urgently and his hand sank into Foggy's shoulder. "Foggy, come on."

Three guys. Now that he was paying attention, Matt sensed that they had weapons. Two had knives. One had a gun. And there was... And there was a fourth one, right in front of them, coming at them with a penknife in his pocket.

Oh God, oh _no._

"Excuse me," the guy in front of them asked Foggy politely, "where's the closest subway station? I think I'm lost."

No, Foggy, Foggy, _no_.

But Foggy couldn't hear Matt's panicked voice, couldn't sense the danger surrounding them. To him it was just a man lost on the streets of a big city. Foggy stopped and smiled, and said, "It's just behind--"

He never got to finish.

One of the three goons who were following them grabbed Foggy from behind and pushed him into a nearby alley. His knife glistened against Foggy's neck. "You make a sound and I cut your throat."

Matt had to do something. He had to, he had to do _something_, he had to somehow help Foggy, he had to--

The tallest of the thugs pushed Foggy against the dingy alley wall. "You don't want to make the wrong move here, sunshine," he sneered. "Though I certainly want you to. Would be fun. The last time I had fun, we managed to kill D--"

Before he could finish, Matt's kick propelled him forward and pushed him face-first into the wall. The other three thugs stared at their now unconscious companion and the seemingly empty space that pushed him, and that was all the distraction Matt needed.

He dropped the one with the gun to the ground with a well-aimed kick to the knee. "You don't get to threaten Franklin Nelson," Matt hissed.

He kicked the guy's head for good measure before advancing on the other two. They looked terrified. They looked as if they'd seen a ghost.

"You don't get to attack Franklin Nelson." Matt punched one of the remaining goons, sending him into a pile of trash. "You don't get to hurt him in any way."

The last of the goons dropped his knife and, pale as death, scrambled to run away. Matt grabbed the front of his T-shirt and slammed him against a wall.

"No one does." Another slam. "Franklin Nelson is protected." And another. "Franklin Nelson is not to be touched." And another, and the sound of a skull cracking filled Matt with vicious glee. "Get that to whoever you're taking orders from: if you as much as lay a finger on Franklin Nelson ever again, I'll come for you."

He let go of the guy's shirt and allowed him to run away. The smell of urine followed him out of the alley.

"M--Matt?"

Matt glanced at Foggy. He was still pressed to the wall, face red, panting, tie askew. He had one hand over his no doubt racing heart, the other he was clutching at his throat... No. The other was clutching the cross on his neck. He was staring, gaping, and he was staring right at Matt.

Matt looked down at his hands. To him, they didn't look any different than before. His hands. Rough, now pallid in death. His hands that he'd just used to beat the crap out of some idiots for hire.

He looked up and back at Foggy. Their eyes met.

He swallowed, a habit more than a necessity. "Yes, Foggy."

**part V: acceptance**

1.

He wasn't sure how they got home.

But when they did, he must have dissociated. He sat down on the couch and kept staring at his hands and he must have dissociated because he heard Foggy calling his name and looking around the apartment.

And then he blinked, and when he opened his eyes it was a completely different day.

2.

Foggy dropped his briefcase when he walked into the living room.

"Matt?"

Matt blinked again. It had been night just a moment ago and he'd just kicked some criminals' asses, and now it was afternoon and Foggy looked shocked.

"Foggy?"

"Matty," Foggy breathed, full of reverence and disbelief.

"You can see me," Matt said. "You can see me?"

Foggy let out a laugh. A little chocked. A little freaked out. "For a moment there I thought I might have gone crazy after all. Where were you?"

"What?"

"What happened? After the, after the alley, you disappeared. I tried talking to you, the board, the mirror, even went to some psychic. And nada. What happened?"

Matt looked at his hands again. "I don't, I don't know."

There was a whisper at the back of his mind, some piece of information that he had, but didn't remember, something that could explain this. He dismissed it. It'd come to him eventually.

Foggy stepped closer to the couch. He lowered himself onto it, slow, deliberate in his movements. He ended up sitting next to Matt the same way they'd sat numerous times when Matt was alive. Almost the same way. The Foggy of now was much stiffer than the Foggy of then.

He reached out. His hand hovered over one of Matt's. "Matt," he repeated. And took Matt's hand in his.

The feeling of the warm weight of Foggy's hand over his, Foggy's fingers squeezing tightly, was indescribable.

3.

Kevin started and clutched his at his heart when Matt greeted him.

"Christ," he said. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath; unnecessary as ghosts didn't need to breathe, but it was a familiar thing to do to calm oneself down, one reflexive link to their lost humanity. "You scared me."

Matt sat down on one of Karen's kitchen chairs and drummed his fingers on the table. "That was the plan."

Kevin's eyes narrowed suspiciously and he cast a glance around the apartment. "Kay's at work," he said, "and your boyfriend isn't here."

"Foggy is not my boyfriend."

"Whatever." Kevin folded his arms across his chest. "Are congratulations in order? You've finally managed to nick your cross?"

Matt's hand stole to the pocket of his trousers where he'd shoved the cross in the morning. Foggy had forgotten it on the coffee table last night thus allowing Matt more freedom during the day. Being able to leave whenever he wanted and go wherever he wanted was very liberating.

"Yup," Matt popped the last letter. "And we talked, Foggy and I. Face to face."

Kevin almost chocked in his haste to comment. "What? You--you manifested? To a human?"

Matt nodded.

"How the hell did you manage to do that?" Kevin's eyes were comically huge. But he didn't look impressed. If anything, he looked worried. And scared. Of Matt? Or for Matt?

"Just like Nettie said," Matt explained. "Powerful and violent emotion can work as a catalyst. My friend was in grave danger. He was attacked and I had to save his life."

"So," Kevin said very slowly, choosing his words in a deliberate way that did nothing to reassure Matt, "you got--scared. You feared for his life."

"I guess?"

"Or would you say that you were--angry at the people who threatened him?"

"A little bit of both? What does it matter?"

Kevin sighed. He unpeeled himself from the counter he'd been leaning against and took a seat opposite Matt. He did look worried. He was chewing his lip, something Karen used to do when there was something she felt needed to be said, but she wasn't sure how it'd be received. Matt used to find that adorable. Now that he knew how ridiculous it looked, he found himself growing annoyed.

"What?" he snapped.

The chewing intensified. "Anger is not a good emotion for a ghost," Kevin began. "It can get... all-consuming for us, to the point where we forget everything else."

"You're saying that ghosts can go darkside."

Kevin leaned across the table, invading Matt's personal space with a look so intense that Matt couldn't bring himself to shove the kid away. "How do you think ghosts are born?"

Matt raked his brain. Kevin and Nettie both told him about it, about doors and choices, and, "You miss your door when you die. And you stay behind."

Kevin laughed softly. It wasn't a pleasant sound. "Don't you think that if it were that simple there'd be a lot more ghosts around? People would choose to say behind and watch over their families?"

That made sense. "I stayed behind. To watch over Foggy."

"Ghosts are born of unjust deaths, Matt," Kevin corrected. "Sure, we can look after out loved ones, but our primary motivator is unfinished business with the way we died. You know. Grudges. Accidents that didn't happen accidentally."

"You mean... ghosts seek revenge."

Kevin nodded. "It's a very thin line to walk, Matt. Anger is the easiest tool at our disposal, but it's also the shortest way for us to become something terrifying."

Matt snorted. "I'm not going to become a monster."

"If you say so. Many ghosts have said that."

He shot Kevin an angry glare. "You know nothing about me."

4.

Matt flipped through the files Foggy had laid out on the floor. There was a lot of them.

"You need to hire someone, Fog," he said. "It's ridiculous to expect you to do all of this alone."

"I'm not alone," Foggy insisted. He blew into his third cup of coffee this night. "Karen helps."

"With all due respect, Karen is not a lawyer. _And_ she has her own duties."

"Well I've got you."

Matt glanced at him. Foggy was smiling sheepishly, but genuinely. It was the happiest and most carefree that Matt has seen him since... well, since he died. Foggy was actually _happy_ with his life right now. With an apartment that wasn't his and an understaffed practice and a broken-off engagement and a ghost of his idiot best friend haunting him.

"You should ask Marci to take a look at these," Matt suggested. He wasn't Marci's biggest fan, but he appreciated how much she loved Foggy. And Foggy needed that. He needed someone who was really there. Even Matt knew that having a ghost for your major relationship in life was unhealthy.

Foggy blushed. "Marci and I... aren't exactly on speaking terms these days."

That was news. "Why?"

"She said that I needed a therapist because," Foggy's whole posture changed and he pitched his voice higher, "I'm drowning in grief and guilt and it's driving me insane."

Matt chose to stay silent. He didn't necessarily disagree with Marci there.

"And I wasn't going insane," Foggy carried on, waving in Matt's general direction. "You _are_ here."

"What?"

Foggy's blush deepened. "I might have told Marci something about feeling as if you... weren't truly gone. She thought it was crazy and I needed help. And I wasn't crazy, you did stick around."

And, well. Marci's phrasing might not have been the best, but her intentions were good and instincts not wrong. Foggy wasn't giving her enough credit.

"Anyway," Foggy put his now empty cup away, "what are we looking at, partner?"

Matt sighed and pulled a couple of documents closer. They'd have to have that conversation another day.

"The prosecution claims that your client left the house then drove around the city and came back to kill his wife. Which doesn't match with the GPS data from his phone."

"It matches the GPS data pulled from his car though."

"The car's GPS could be broken." Matt pointed at Foggy's laptop. "It's apparently a common problem with this particular model of Toyota. Not to mention," he grinned, "it's New York. Who in their right mind would just go _driving_ around Manhattan?"

"Good point," Foggy grinned back, "unfortunately inadmissable in court."

"You should insist on checking the car GPS system to confirm it doesn't work. Best starting point. If that part of the prosecution's line falls, they'll have to scramble to figure out something new."

Foggy didn't say a word. As the silence stretched, Matt felt compelled to fill it. "What?"

"Nothing," Foggy said. But he was smiling, so it was clearly not 'nothing'.

"Fog."

"It's just--" Foggy huffed. "I don't need a new partner at the office. I have you at home. And that's more than enough."

5.

Matt wished he thought that too.

6.

"The car GPS system is all kinds of fried," Foggy told him triumphantly the moment he stepped through the threshold. 

Nettie raised her brows. "I thought you said he wouldn't be back until late at night."

"He wasn't supposed to be," Matt murmured, putting his chess piece away. To Foggy he said, "That's great news. You're back early."

"I thought I'd come back and we could work on disproving the rest of ADA Dawson's ideas." He put his briefcase on the kitchen counter and made his way towards the fridge, took a beer out. The bottle opened with a hiss and Foggy took a swig. "You know, since we're on the roll."

"Great."

Nettie giggled. "Is this what you do in your free time?"

Matt bristled. "I _am_ a lawyer."

"What?" Foggy asked.

"You _were_ a lawyer," Nettie reminded him. "Now you're dead."

"Rude."

"What's rude?" Foggy asked, growing increasingly confused.

"I'm not talking to you," Matt shot at him, then turned back to Nettie, "and you're one to talk. A self-proclaimed guardian angel of your apartment building."

"Everyone needs a hobby. I have to pass the time somehow, Matthew. You can't even begin to imagine how long forever is. I don't want to go insane, so my ghostly predilections have to be utilised."

Foggy looked around the apartment. "Is someone here?"

"Why would you go insane?" Matt asked, ignoring Foggy for the time being. This felt important.

Nettie said with a smile, "Emotions are not easy for ghosts. We feel everything with an intensity unknown to humans, and all of it can tie to anger. Love leads to anger. Fear leads to anger. Happiness leads to anger. Anger--Well, you get the picture."

"Why is that?"

"Because we're not here," Nettie said. Seeing Matt's confused expression she clarified, "We exist on this halfway plane. Not in the living world. Not in the Afterlife. We're stuck _here_, stuck observing a world we'll never be a part of again. A world that goes on without us. We watch our friends and loved ones keep on living. Finding happiness without us. And then we watch them die peacefully, and we're _still here _ even after they're gone. Wouldn't that just piss you off?"

Matt took a moment to think about it. About the stone cold fear when he realised those thugs in the alley were after Foggy. The twinges of jealousy every time he thought of Marci, or of Karen and Frank Castle. How annoyed it all made him feel.

"It would," he admitted.

Foggy put his half-finished beer bottle away. "What would what?"

Nettie patted Matt's hand. "Your friend needs your help," she said. "You should focus on that. We can finish our game some other time. We have more than we need of that."

And with that she disappeared.

Matt felt Foggy's hand land on his shoulder. "What was that?" Foggy asked for what seemed an umpteenth time. "Are you alright?"

Matt was tempted to squeeze Foggy's hand. He didn't. "I had a friend over," he answered the first question, pointedly ignoring the second. "Nettie. She says 'hi'."

"You've made more ghost friends?"

Matt looked up at Foggy. His friend. His friend who no longer seemed as tired as before; he smiled now and his eyes lost that haunted look. To anyone else he was a person who finally began working through his grief. He was someone who was ready to move on.

"It used to get lonely," Matt admitted, "before I knew how to talk to you."

Foggy's fingers dug into the non-flesh of Matt's shoulder. Matt saw. Matt didn't feel, not really. He would have felt it, had he been alive and possessed a nervous system. As it were, he saw and his mind was expecting to feel the touch, so he did, somewhat. For a moment he wondered what Foggy felt when he touched him.

Someone who was ready to move on. Yeah, right.

Matt knew better.

7.

Foggy had said he'd be home late. He and Karen planned to go out tonight to celebrate their GPS client walking free of a murder charge. And from Kevin Matt also knew that Karen had invited Marci to the bar with them.

It was then entirely possible that Foggy wouldn't be back home until tomorrow.

There was no need to worry.

Matt glanced at the clock and worried.

He had no way of contacting Foggy. In theory he _was_ capable of picking up a phone and calling Foggy, but he had no clue if a ghost's voice would register as an actual voice or as mere static. Not to mention, there was nothing to call Foggy _with_. He knew that Foggy kept his old phone in his little Matt memorial box which rested under the bed, but the service on it had long been disconnected.

There was no need to worry. Foggy was an adult, perfectly capable of looking after himself. Keeping him safe was not Matt's job and not the reason why Matt was here.

It was Karen's voice Matt heard first, two floors down. "Maybe we should go to the hospital."

Hospital. Matt's metaphorical blood went cold.

"No," he heard Foggy grunt. "It's not a deep cut, doesn't even need stitches."

"Foggy..."

"Karen, no." Foggy's voice booked no disagreements. He'd made up his mind and wasn't going to budge. "I can take care of myself."

"How?"

They were getting closer to the apartment. Matt looked around. Nothing in here could make Karen suspicious.

It wasn't that he didn't want to see her, or rather didn't want _her_ to see _him_. But it would freak her out and would require a complex explanation that they didn't have the time for right now.

"Who do you think would patch Matt up when his nurse friend wasn't available?" Foggy fumbled with the keys. "Claire showed me a thing or two."

The door to Matt's apartment finally opened and Foggy and Karen went inside.

"I'm home," Foggy called from the entrance. 

Matt winced.

"Who are you talking to?" Karen asked. Matt could imagine her confused frown.

Silence.

"I--" Foggy stuttered. He must have forgotten that Karen didn't know Matt was there. For a moment he must have forgotten that Matt was dead.

"Is someone here?" The suspicion in Karen's voice was almost hurtful. What was she thinking? That while she was working hard to get Foggy and Marci back together, Foggy was hiding a lover in his dead best friend's old apartment?

Hurried footsteps. A moment later Karen burst into the living room, followed closely by Foggy.

"Karen, it's not what you thi--"

Foggy stopped and took in the sight of the living room. A very messy living room, with case files strewn all over the floor and several forgotten coffee mugs littering the coffee table. Messy, but also empty.

Foggy blinked, as confused as Karen was.

"No one's here," Karen said, half baffled, half relieved.

A beat.

"Of course there's no one here," Foggy told her. Matt could hear the undercurrent of unsurety in his voice. "I just--said that. Wasn't thinking, really."

Karen looked at him and her expression softened. "Is it because this was Matt's place?"

"... Yes."

Karen sucked in a breath. Then her gaze fell on Foggy's forearm. His sleeve was cut and bloodied, and Foggy was holding his arm protectively close to his chest.

"Let's get this taken care of first."

Foggy sank onto the couch while Karen went to get the well-stocked first aid kit that was a remnant of Matt's vigilante career. Matt sat down next to Foggy while Karen busied herself with removing Foggy's jacket.

"What the hell happened, Foggy?"

Karen cleaned the wound. Foggy had been right, the cut wasn't deep even if it did bleed quite a lot. "Do you think Brett will find the guy?" she asked.

"I doubt it," Foggy murmured. He looked down at the bandage Karen had put on his arm. "You're surprisingly good at this."

Karen sighed. "Three guesses as to why."

"Karen, Frank Castle is--"

"I know who and what he is," Karen cut him off. "I--I've accepted that. Just like you accepted Matt."

"No," Foggy said. Harsh. Next to him, Matt flinched. The truth of that statemwnt felt worse than a physical blow. "I didn't accept that. I've resigned myself to it. There's a difference."

Karen packed away the rest of the bandages and took the latex gloves off. She wasn't looking at Foggy, had her gaze trained on a spot on the floor where, unbeknown to her, one of Matt's feet rested.

"Some days I fear that Frank is going to end up like Matt. That I'll get the call again and will have to go and see his body in the morgue."

Foggy cracked a smile. It wasn't a happy one. "I think Frank has a slightly better self-preservation instinct than Matt did."

"I hope so." Karen got up from the floor. She kissed the top of Foggy's head. "You shouldn't go to work tomorrow. Just--go to bed, sleep, I'll take care of everything else."

"I'll see you on Monday?"

Karen nodded. "I'll see you on Monday."

Foggy waited until the door closed behind Karen before asking into the emptiness of the apartment, "Matt, are you there, buddy?"

8.

Foggy waited for an answer.

When it became clear that one wasn't coming, he got up and dragged himself to bed.

Matt let him. Every instinct he had was telling him he ought to question Foggy about his injury, about what had happened. But that wasn't what Foggy needed. Foggy needed rest. Foggy needed to heal.

Matt could stew in anger a couple hours more.

He went into the bedroom behind Foggy and laid down on the bed next to him, resolved to watch over his best friend until he woke.

9.

Which Foggy did about ten hours later.

Matt was sitting on the bed, back propped up on pillows resting against the headboard, engrossed in a stack of notes Foggy had brought from the office two days before.

Next to him, Foggy groaned. He stretched, rubbed his eyes, turned onto his side. Opened his eyes and got startled so badly he almost fell off the bed.

"Good morning, Foggy," Matt said nonchalantly, not raising his eyes from the papers.

"Matt!" Foggy cast a wild look around the room. "What are you--"

"I watched over you."

"You watched me sleep." Matt nodded. "That's creepy, dude."

"I wanted to make sure you were fine." Matt glanced pointedly at Foggy's bandaged forearm, which Foggy drew closer to himself in a futile attempt to hide it. "Because you _are_ fine, right?"

"Where were you yesterday?" Foggy countered with his own question. "I came home with Karen and you weren't--"

"I didn't want Karen to see me."

"So what, you can turn visibility on and off?"

"Basically, yeah. If I decided I wanted to, I could disappear on your right now." He dropped the notes on the floor next to the bed. "Which I might do if you don't tell me what happened."

Foggy hoisted himself into a sitting position and hissed as he accidentally hit the cut on his arm. "It's nothing."

"You wouldn't have involved Brett if it were nothing." Foggy glared at him. Matt shrugged; he wasn't going to be guilt-tripped. "Just because I wasn't there to be seen doesn't mean I didn't hang around to listen."

"It was just a misunderstanding."

"I know you're lying, Fog."

"Still hearing heartbeats?"

"As a matter of fact, yes." Not as well as before. Over time it became clear to him that being able to see was overcoming his reliance on his other senses, which were already impaired due to being dead. There was something beautiful and intoxicating in being able to see; everything else faded next to that. "But I can also see your face."

Foggy looked away. That wouldn't do.

"Foggy," Matt said, changing positions to cross-legged and scooting closer, "talk to me."

"It was one of the guys from the alley," Foggy admitted eventually in a small voice. His hands were shaking. "The one who held a knife to my throat."

Matt felt perfect calm wash over him. Perfect, still. "What did he want?"

Foggy noticed his shaking hands. He balled his fists in an attempt to get his hands to stay still. "Same thing as before. Stay away from the case. Stay away from that one building all of this is about." Foggy's hands stubbornly refused not to tremble. He shoved them under his armpits. "He made it look like a drunk at a bar thing. Karen still thinks he was just a guy who got angry over my song choice."

Matt looked at him and put as much heart and conviction into his words as he could, "You need to drop this case."

Foggy gaped. "Are you kidding me?" He sounded outraged at the mere thought. "No!"

"It's too dangerous. The next time, and you can bet that with these people there _will_ be a next time, you might not be so lucky. You might end up dead."

"You've been doing dangerous things when you knew it was right."

"I also did end up dead," Matt pointed out. Then he gave Foggy a once-over and raised a brow. "And let's face it: you're not me, Foggy."

Foggy swallowed the off-hand insult and decided to change tactics. "Those guys need to be stopped."

"And they will," Matt said. He'd see to that. "Just not by _you_. Let other people risk their lives."

"That doesn't sound like you."

"Yes, well, death changes one's perspective."

Foggy winced at that and leaned back against the headboard.

They remained sitting like that for some time, seemingly two best friends next to each other, but with a heavy and uncomfortable silence and thoughts of dying creating an unbridgeable chasm between them.

10.

Foggy didn't even notice when Matt's cross mysteriously disappeared from the apartment.

11.

Being dead was mostly inconvenient bordering on horrible, but Matt had to admit there were several surprising perks. No need to eat or sleep, as much as he'd enjoyed both while alive. No getting tired. No getting hurt. And the invisibility on demand – that was helpful indeed.

He first found the man with the penknife in the same bar that Foggy and Karen had celebrated in. The bartender and other patrons recognised him, so he must have been a regular. Didn't follow Foggy into the bar, just--happened to be there, saw Foggy in there and decided to work a little overtime. That was good. Meant they weren't tailing Foggy, just that Foggy went to the wrong bar on a wrong night.

Matt spent several nights watching the guy, learning his routine. Building guard work during the day. Fast food in the afternoon. Drinks at his favourite bar, usually alone. Go home, beat his wife. Then go to his other job, scaring and blackmailing and hurting people.

Foggy was right. These people had to be stopped.

Matt followed the guy out of the bar after a week of following him around. He knew the route by heart now: a four-block walk, pass three different dark and damp alleys where a lot of bad things could happen to people deserving or not.

The man was whistling a happy tune as he walked. He was still whistling when Matt grabbed him by the lapels and pushed into dark alley #2, behind conveniently placed dumpster bins.

"What--" the man managed to say before Matt's hand clamped over his mouth.

"I know who you are, _Eric_," Matt said, his voice silky and polite in most dangerous ways. "I know _what_ you are and what you do."

He shoved the man, Eric Manners, against a wall. A hollow _thud_ of a skull hitting bricks warmed him inside.

"You've been warned to stay away from Franklin Nelson."

Eric Manners' eyes darted wildly around. He was pinned to a wall, a hand was muffling his cries and all that surrounded him was empty space. There was no one _there_.

Good.

"And did you listen?" Matt shoved him again. Another _thud_. "No."

He let go of Eric Manners. The man slumped forward, caught himself on his knees before falling. He was breathing heavily and looked scared shitless.

"Who the hell--"

This time it was Matt's punch that shut him up. Matt grabbed the front of Eric Manners' jacket and punched him again. And again.

"I know everything about you, Eric Manners," Matt hissed. Eric Manners' face was getting bloody. "There are so many ways I could hurt you in if you don't. Get. This message."

And again, and again, andagain, andagainandagainandagainand--

"'kay," Eric Manners managed to force out, accompanied by a mouthful of blood.

His nose was broken in three places. The orbital bones were fractured in at least five and his left eyes was so swollen it looked sewn shut.

Matt had no blood on his hands.

He grinned. It made him feel happy. It made him feel satisfied. It made him feel powerful.

12.

It made him feel _alive_.

13.

"There's something... different about you." Kevin tapped his chin. "I'm not sure how to put it. You seem more... intense."

"That sounds like a good thing."

"No, it's really not."

They were walking around Central Park, enjoying the sun they couldn't truly feel and the spring flowers they could smell, but not as well as when they were alive. From time to time Kevin would wave at someone and call their name out, and then he'd turn to Matt and explain how he knew that ghost, where they were from, _when_ they were from and what place they were haunting.

A pair of young women in bedgowns curtsied as they passed them by. Kevin grinned. "Mary and Estella Brown," he said. "Sisters. Their brother murdered their entire family before slitting his own throat. Only these two stayed behind."

"Their clothes look," Matt searched for a word other than 'bloody', "old."

"They died during the American Revolution. Mary says their brother was a big royalist, I guess he didn't want to live in a kingless country. So he killed everyone."

"So to everyone around you appear in whatever clothes you died in?"

"Erm, yeah?" Kevin pointed at Matt. "You have this black special ops thing going on, with some added bloodstains here and there. Haven't you ever looked in a mirror?"

Truth be told, he hadn't. But no wonder Foggy would sometimes get uncomfortable while looking at him. A constant reminder of what got Matt killed. Of what Foggy never accepted about him.

"Any particular place we're going to or are we just trailing around aimlessly? I have things to do."

Which wasn't even a lie. He could be at home now, working on the closing statement for the assault case that Foggy took after Matt had convinced him to drop the tenement one. Or he could be out there, making his way to the heart of Sleazebag Incorporated one douchebag at a time.

Either was more interesting than observing nature with Kevin.

"We're waiting for Nettie," Kevin said. "She said she'd meet us here. She sounded upset when we spoke earlier."

She found them sitting on a bench by the East 110th playground. Kevin wasn't joking about her being upset – she looked equal parts sad and furious, and she sat down next to Matt with an angry huff.

When she didn't volunteer any information herself, Kevin asked, "What's wrong?"

Nettie glared at the children playing on the playground's structures. "I hate how this world turned out," she said eventually. She sounded sad. Disappointed. As if the world had personally insulted her.

"Care to be more specific?"

Nettie shook her head. Bright red curls danced around her cheeks. "I've been taking care of my apartment building for years. Protecting its inhabitants. Scaring away abusive husbands, loan sharks and the like."

A woman after Matt's own heart. "Admirable."

"It was easy to do when all I had to work with were people. But nowadays? It's all corporations and company men, and they keep coming and they want to tear my building down."

Tear a building down. This whole mess started because a year ago Nelson and Murdock took a case of an elderly woman who was trying to keep her building from being torn down.

Nettie looked at Matt. "You're a lawyer. You and your friend have a practice."

"We had a practice," Matt corrected her automatically. "Now it's only Foggy's. I'm dead."

"Could you help me?" Nettie turned on the bench and angled her whole body towards Matt. "Perhaps there are legal ways to protect my building."

There probably were, but every lawyer who attempted that was either scared away or ended up dead. "It's not that easy, Nettie."

"Please. Could you at least talk to your partner?"

Matt promised he would. But he wouldn't. Not when he'd just made sure that Foggy would stay away from this case. Foggy wouldn't - and shouldn't period - be able to help.

14.

But _he_ could do it.

15.

There was no blood on his hands.

There was never any blood on his hands anymore.

16.

"Brett says there's a new vigilante in town."

Matt looked up from the laptop and answered with a carefully worded, "Oh?"

Foggy nodded. "He thinks it's an Inhuman, though people at the precinct are betting a tech genius."

"Why is that?"

Foggy took a bite of the pizza Matt had ordered online. He made a muffled sound and held his hand up, silently telling Matt to wait. He reached into his briefcase and produced a folded copy of _The Bulletin_. He pointed to the front page article.

"'The Invisible Knight Strikes Again'," he read while chewing; it made the already ridiculous-sounding sentence barely comprehensible. Matt snorted. "What? I've heard worse."

"Fog, it's _terrible_."

"Yeah, it sucks." Foggy dropped the newspaper on the floor and looked at Matt. His expression turned serious. "You wouldn't know anything about this, would you?"

Not even a muscle in Matt's face twitched. "No," he said. "Not a thing."

He wasn't sure Foggy believed him. But Foggy also didn't press the issue and they both had more important things to do before tomorrow's final hearing.

17.

Eric Manners. Jack O'Connell. Roderick Knoll. And tonight, Connor McDowell.

Every single one of them had coughed up information of Sleazebag Incorporated, allowed Matt to get closer and closer to shutting down this criminal enterprise that threatened Foggy, endangered Nettie and the people she was protecting, and, in the very beginning, cost Matt his life.

A well-placed kick had Connor McDowell choking on blood.

"Who do you work for?"

It was like Fisk all over again. They were willing to tell him things, but no one wanted to give up the name of their boss.

Connor McDowell flashed a bloody grin. "You think you scare me?"

Matt punched him. McDowell wouldn't stop smiling.

"You don't scare me," he slurred. "You and your fancy powers, you don't scare me. So go ahead."

Matt punched him again and heard McDowell's cheekbone crack under his fist.

"I ain't scared of no one," McDowell bragged. "I'm a goddamn _hero_."

"Oh yeah?" Matt hit him in the chest. Ribs broke.

McDowell spat out some blood. "I killed the Devil of Hell's Kitchen," he said and Matt froze. "Helped him jump off a rooftop and watched him go splat on the ground. There ain't nothing I'm afraid of now."

Matt looked at his hand and then at McDowell's smug grin. With a quick movement he plunged his hand inside McDowell's chest. McDowell wheezed. His eyes went almost cartoonishly wide with terror when Matt decided to make himself somewhat visible.

"The thing about the devil," Matt whispered into McDowell's ear as his hand found the man's heart, "is that he will always come to collect his due."

He squeezed.

18.

There was no blood on his hands.

Which didn't mean he couldn't feel it.

19.

"Tell me it wasn't you," Foggy begged.

_The Bulletin_ was lying on the table between them, its front page adorned with the photo of a body and the article saying that the Invisible Knight had crushed the victim's heart.

"It wasn't me."

Foggy grabbed a fistful of his hair and tugged. "What the hell were you thinking?! Going out and daredeviling when that's exactly what got you killed?"

"They got me killed! And they were going to kill you, and a whole lot of other people."

Foggy wiggled a trembling finger at him. "Don't," he said, "don't tell me that you did it for me, don't--"

"You said it yourself: they had to be stopped. I am stopping them."

"A man is dead!" Foggy yelled. "You, you _killed_ someone."

"He deserved it."

"The Matt I knew would have never stooped down to murder."

Matt clenched his fists. The glass of water standing on the kitchen counter exploded.

Foggy took a step back. He was _terrified_. "You're not Matt," he said slowly while backing away, one precise step after another, the way you'd remove yourself from the reach of an angry predator. "I don't know what you are, but you're not Matt. My Matt was a good person. He wasn't a murderer. He wasn't a monst--"

The force of Matt's anger slammed Foggy into a wall.

"I'm trying to keep you safe!" Matt hissed as he strode closer to Foggy. Foggy's face was getting red. "To keep this city safe. That's why I'm still here. Because this city needs me, Foggy."

"Not--like--this," Foggy croaked.

"This is the only way. You have no idea how deep this goes. How far their reach is. I'm the only one who can stop them."

Foggy's face was getting purple from the lack of air. "Matty--_please_\--"

Matt blinked. His arm was at Foggy's throat and Foggy was close to passing out.

Oh God.

_Oh God_.

He let go. Foggy slumped to the floor, barely conscious. Matt looked at his hands, terrified.

Lights were flickering in the apartment.

He disappeared.

20.

"What happens to vengeful ghosts?"

Nettie looked at him from the park chessboard and frowned. "What do you mean?"

"When someone becomes a vengeful ghost, what happens to them?"

She leaned back in the chair. "They get consumed by their rage. Every other emotion fades until anger is all that they have left. They forget what it was like to be human. They forget all about everyone they loved and cared about. They're just not capable of caring anymore."

Matt nodded. He rubbed his hands. He could feel the phantom blood on them. Could feel Foggy's cold sweat. "Is there any way to help them?"

"To bring them back from being vengeful spirits? No. It's a one way trip."

"I killed someone," Matt confessed. "I didn't mean to, at least I don't think I did. I just, got so angry and it, it happened."

He glanced at Nettie. She didn't look surprised. But she did look sad.

"Oh, Matthew," she said. "I told you that anger was trouble. Why weren't you patient?"

"It turned out that time was the one thing I didn't have." He clenched his fists. "I'll control myself. I'll control myself better."

"You won't be able to." She took one of his hands, inserted her smaller fingers under his clenched ones, unbending them one by one. "You've crossed a line that cannot be uncrossed. It'll only get worse. You'll become dangerous to the people you love and then to everybody else."

He tried very hard not to picture Foggy's crumpled form on the floor of his apartment.

"So what do you do with vengeful ghosts?"

"We send them away," Nettie said as if that explained everything.

"To Heaven?" Or Hell, probably, in his case. At this point he wasn't expecting anything better.

She shook her head. "You've missed your chance for an Afterlife when you've passed on your door, Matthew. There is no Heaven or Hell for the likes of us."

"Then what happens to the ghosts that have been sent away? Where do they go? Purgatory?"

"They go nowhere," Nettie said. Her thumb rubbed soothing circles on the back of Matt's hand. She was very quiet and wasn't looking him in the eye. "They become nothing."

It was a concept that went against everything he believed in as a Catholic. It was a concept that somehow scared him more than the idea of Heaven or Hell. That there was no eternity waiting for him, for good or bad. No forever. Just, a void. Emptiness. "That's--terrible."

She smiled sadly. "But it's the only way to keep people safe from you."

21.

"Foggy."

Foggy jumped at the sound of his voice. Matt waited for the guilt and the shame to come, but they didn't; he was only aware of the mild annoyance simmering under his skin. If he needed any more proof of Nettie being right, this was it.

Nothing but anger indeed.

"Matt."

Foggy looked uncertain. He looked scared and Matt couldn't blame him. They didn't part on the best of terms. They didn't part friends, exactly.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm so, so sorry for everything."

Foggy swallowed. "It wasn't you." He sounded like he was trying to convince himself more than Matt.

"You were right," Matt said, ignoring Foggy's feeble attempt at absolution. "I am becoming a monster."

Foggy sucked in a breath. His throat was still bruised, even after days of healing. It must have hurt. "We can, we can find a way to fix that."

Oh, Foggy. "Yeah. I need you to help me fix that."

He took the cross out of his pocket and dropped it onto the kitchen counter. Foggy eyed it suspiciously.

"You need to destroy it," Matt said as Foggy peeked at the necklace. "It will... make me go away."

Foggy reeled back and shot Matt an astonished look. "No!" he said. "That's--We're not doing that."

"Vengeful ghosts have little to no humanity left, Foggy. They're pure rage and they're dangerous. I've hurt people. I've hurt _you_. I can't _be_ this thing and I can't let that happen again."

"We'll find another way to fix it. Danny Rand will know, or he'll know someone who does."

"That's the only way." Matt pointed at the cross. "Drop it in chlorine bleach. It will dissolve. That should do it."

"If I do that," Foggy asked slowly, "what will happen to you?"

Matt weighed his answer. "I'll go away."

Foggy shook his head. Stubborn man. "I can't lose you, Matt."

"You've already lost me, Foggy, months ago. It's just--neither of us wanted to admit that." Foggy let out a choked sound. "And if this keeps up? You'll lose me all over again in a way that I don't want to happen to me."

Foggy sniffled. Matt took a step towards him and was satisfied to see that Foggy didn't flinch away from him even though he had all the right. Even though he was eyeing him warily.

His next question surprised Matt. "But I'll see you again?"

"What?"

"If we do that, you will go somewhere better. You will be fine and you will be at peace. And one day, one day I'll see you again." Foggy wiped at his eyes. "I can't--Not if I never see you again."

Matt looked at him, taking in every single detail of his face. He'd wanted to be able to see him, to know what he looked like, for years. Foggy looked nothing like Matt used to imagine. Everything about him was so much better than whatever dream Matt had come up with. If nothing else, he at least got this, the image of his best friend that he now could take with him beyond, out of this whole experience.

"Of course you will," he lied. It was the kind thing to do. "And I'll be waiting for you. I _promise_."

**part VI: meaning**

1.

He had chlorine bleach under the sink.

Foggy started crying as he poured some in a glass.

2.

They watched the sunset from Matt's rooftop.

He was given one extra year on this Earth and this was the first time he stopped to look at it. He really wasted the opportunity. There were so many things he hadn't done that he wished he had, and so many things he regretted doing. So many things he regretted not doing. "There's one human thing I wish ghosts could do."

"Eating?" Foggy asked. He was trying very hard to crack a joke. Humour as a coping mechanism. He'd be fine; Matt had to believe that. "Sex?"

He lacked the words to express the grief and gut-wrenching sorrow he felt. At everything that had happened, at being dead. At himself for not being better, and at himself for leaving Foggy alone. Even if he wasn't here to keep him safe, even if he wanted to more than anything. Humans had such a clever way of expressing sadness and he hadn't appreciated it enough while alive.

Matt closed his eyes and listened to the sounds of his city. "I wish we could cry."

3.

"For what it's worth," Matt said after the sun had set and they went back into his apartment, "I'm glad I at least get the chance to say goodbye. Couldn't do it the last time."

He tried to put a hand on Foggy's shoulder. It went straight through.

4.

They sat on the couch together until Foggy fell asleep, pallid and exhausted in the sad light of the purple billboard.

"I love you," Matt said softly. He wasn't sure if Foggy had heard him. Maybe he had, maybe he hadn't; in the end it didn't matter. He was saying it for himself rather than Foggy, the one last selfish hoorah of a dying - dead - man. He'd never said it before and that was one regret he didn't want to take with him beyond, to whatever nothingness awaited him. "I love you."

5.

When Foggy opened his eyes in the morning, the cross was lying partially dissolved in the glass and Matt was nowhere to be seen.

Foggy looked around the empty apartment. His papers were there, the ones that Matt promised he'd look at. The ouija board lay forgotten under the coffee table, no longer needed and likely never to be needed again. A game of chess was set up on that table, because Matt got into it for some reason and wanted them to play together, something they never seemed to have the time to do. All signs of a life interrupted. Or maybe - or maybe the interruption was only now just ending. Maybe this had been an intermission, a convenient pause, a chance to put his life on hold. Maybe it was time to come back.

He'd see Matt again. Matt promised. For all his faults, he always kept the promises he made Foggy, the really important ones.

And he loved him. That had to count for something too.

Foggy closed his eyes and exhaled for what felt like the first time in a year, and whispered, almost to himself, "Goodbye."

0.

_The people you love become ghosts inside of you, and like this you keep them alive._  
Rob Montgomery


End file.
